Yeah, I've been there. I've also been to Elkins and Nitro and a passel of other places in WV. Big highway signs at the border: "Ohio: A whole bunch of miles" and others like "Welcome to West Virginia: Gateway to Pennsylvania" and "Parkersburg: We'd post the population only we can't count that high" and "Historical Sight: This here's where the pig in the Hatfield-McCoy Feud was borned".

Where in West Virginia, sweet Mmario? Exactly where? Which Cracker Barrel? Was my cousin Billy there? Tall, anorexic looking fella who answers back to the voices in his head? Or my big red-headed cousin Charles and his little wife Linda? They would have been playing checkers while waiting for their party to be called.

Did you stop by Elmer and Beulah's farm, out on Turkey Creek? They're both buried out there, up on the ridge. I always think that if I were to go out there on a warm, Saturday night in June, and sit a spell on the porch steps, the noise of the insects, the frogs on the pond, and the wind in the trees would like as not resolve into the sound of stringed instruments, mountain voices, and the thump of feet clogging and flat-footing on the floorboards of the porch. Were the moon to be full enough to shed some light, I bet I'd see Elmer, frailin' away on his old banjo, gray-haired and plump Beulah leaning beside him on the rail, nodding in time to the music. Glen would be leaning into the center of the circle, rosin rising from his bow like smoke in the dim light, and behind him and a little to the side, Tommy keeping everyone in perfect time with his rock-steady rhythm guitar playing. John wouldn't appear until it was late and time to slow things down just a bit with his country blues harmonica, and Kaye would by then be just tipsy enough to have the nerve to join in and sing nice harmony on the choruses.

When it got real late and the moon started going down, I imagine they'd all just gently fade into the dark. I'd stand up, brush the dust from the seat of my pants, and walk on back down the lane to my car, thinking, "Yep, those times were almost heaven."

The chilly steel of a rapier transfixing your miserable excuse for a carcase from front to back, the blade steaming from the hot blood flowing down its length....

But I digress. I meant to say yes, Amos, I knew all that. And I can think of no one more deserving of such labor than myself (even though I did not realize I'd copped the number until I'd already done so).

Waxing pompous again, are you, Amos? Gazing down your patrician nose at others again? Waving your scented hankie in their faces as you dismiss them in your cavalier fashion? Well, sir, I predict that there is a grim comeuppance looming in your future and you will soon find the cowbird of ill fortune pecking at your window, the snake of vile calumny slithering down your driveway, and the polecat of universal rejection leaving a smelly and steaming "present" in your garden.

You may gloat, sir, ;litytle suspecting the trials and tribulations your small triumph has cost others, the pains they went to on your behalf, the deprivations they endured to ensure you were so gifted. Be not hasty in assuming merit, sir, instead of profound generosity. There are many ways at work in the works of the world.

Rapaire, when you say you learned of life and love and the pleasures of the flesh from Cyd Charise, I take it you are referring to trying to dance just like her when you were eight, and falling on your bum?

Somber shadows mark the trail, and cooling twilight winds shuffle the needles and leaves. It is a long slope, with many a dispiriting struggle in it. You can look up and up, with the lowering sun at your back, and face the grayness from which tomorrow -- and the Next Great K -- will be born into the world. The day to come is a speculation, an extension by intellect. Not all the conviction in the world will replace the arrival of the fact, as the thin, dark bands of night's darkness first start to tremble and yield to the marching, oncoming river of light that makes that fateful day materialize in your life. For it comes, as surely as your next breath, your next smile, your next heartbeat; be sure, it comes. It will come over those eastern shadowy peaks like a bolt of sunshine breaking into an ancient outhouse. The Great K will come. Be ready.

I'd dearly love to attend a City Council meeting in which you appear as Book Man, the Aveneger of Literacy, by leaping to the window ledge and swinigng through the hall from a chandelier, vorpal blade in hand, pinning those passive-aggressive developer-suckers to the wall with quick deft strokes and holding them up for Bigger Better Book Budgets!

Well, there is still the "pick up" combat here in the 'hood and on the streets, Amos. And you can never tell about the City Council meetings or the debates of the University's Philosophical Society's teas.

And so, until next year, the Scarlet Bookmeister contents himself with the mutilation of small, cylindrical canine objects, waiting for fall, when once again the hills will ring to the sound of his blade, and the rivers will turn pink with his rampaging spillage of human blood.

Well, Mom, fencing is over for the season. I won't be going to Nationals or the Olympics, so I have wiped the blood off of my blades and put them away until September next. I'll practice as I can over the Summer, and otherwise relive my combats in my memories -- the screams of the wounded, the whimpers of the dying, the great gushing gouts of gore...ah, all put away until the Fall.